This dog these philosophers found writhing in pain; and they dragged him away and hid him to nurse and heal him.
And one said, “Why not utilize this Providential Opening through which to scientifically observe the relationship between Victuals and Virtue, about which there is so much dispute nowadays?”
And the proposition seemed good unto them; and it was so, that they stretched over the aperture a transparent membrane, on which they marked a graduated scale whose zero was located at half fullness of the stomach; and they called the instrument a “Conductometer.”
Into this stomach they injected, by means of a funnel, a specially prepared, nutritious food, and by means of the scale they observed the relationship of the dog’s behavior to the food in his stomach.
Now, it was observed that when the quantity of his food was at the zero line, he was just an ordinary dog, with just ordinary moral ideas; but for every degree above zero he improved, and for every degree below he deteriorated.
When they injected two or three above-zero degrees of food into him, his eye brightened, and his moral perceptions grew more acute. At this point they asked him, “What is thine opinion of the Commandment ‘Thou Shalt not Steal?’”
And he replied “It is an excellent one; no dog ought to steal.”
Then they filled him up one or two more degrees, and asked him the same question. “It is shocking to steal,” said he, “and the dog that does not know the difference between meum and tuum ought to be made to know it with a club.”
Then they filled him full up. And a glow of most beautiful intelligence came into his eye; a most reposeful calm came over his frame; a heavenly peace overspread his countenance, and he displayed a decided propensity to piety, and an irresistible tendency to hold forth like a fat-salaried barker, on the virtue of Contentment with one’s earthly lot, Trust in God and the beauties of Law and Order.